At Susan Orlean‘s suggestion, I am reading Pat Barker’s Regeneration.
Barker writes of a doctor who “knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration.
Cut a chrysallis open and you will find a rotting caterpillar.
What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems.
No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.”
Endings always proceed beginnings. The caterpillar knows what it must do and does it fully without holding back. It’s challenging to let go completely.
We tend to cling what is—our habits, our wounds, our needs, the way we think we need things to be so we can be okay.
But watch this caterpillar exert towards death in order to transform into the next phase of life:
We don’t have sufficient language to appreciate this phase of withdrawl, decay, this era of ending that must proceed beginning. We mostly talk about it through painful type of words. We cry. We are in pain, usually lost, and mostly afraid.
The other thing we don’t talk about is the violence of metamorphosis. It’s not all all like the graceful blooming of a flower. Metamorphosis and blooming are two completely different acts.
In the butterflies hatching, they must pump fluid from their bodies into those crumpled, packed down tightly wings in the first minutes of emergence to make them unfold into flat sheets by which they fly.
There’s a thrashing, a panicked and frenetic movement in many of the videos I have watched in order to get free.
“The process of transformation consists mostly of decay and then this crisis when emergence from what came before must be total and abrupt” – Rebecca Solnit
In other words: The process of transformation ain’t pretty folks.
But the end result? WOW.
Watch here and insert yourself and your life with these videos and the content of the post.
Be the caterpillar and the butterfly.
{ 2 comments }
Wow..speaks to my heart because this best describes exactly what I am in: Endings and Beginnings http://bit.ly/jqVhMz
people, if you read anything today read this. @binduwiles is absolutely remarkable.. #wds speaker for next year please! http://shar.es/HC4Kf